The present invention relates to improvements in cigarette packing machines. More particularly, the invention relates to cigarette packing machines of the type in which an orderly group of cigarettes is enclosed in a so-called soft pack which consists of a foil wrapped around the cigarettes and of an outer paper wrapper.
In the above mentioned cigarette packing machines, a cigarette group is introduced into an open-ended tubular mandrel, called an arbor, around which the foil and paper wrapper is formed, said wrapper presenting one closed side, which corresponds to the bottom of the cigarette packet. Then, the cigarette group is pushed by a pushing plunger, which causes the said cigarette group to move through the arbor, against the bottom of the wrapper; subsequently, upon prosecution of the movement of the pushing plunger, the cigarette group, together with the wrapper vested thereonto, are slipped off the arbor and transferred to a receiving station at which suitable folders effect to the folding of the flaps at the open side of the packet, thus closing the said packet which is ready for the subsequent cellowrapping operation.
The sliding out of the wrapper, or slipping-off, from the arbor, promoted by the pushing action of the cigarette group which in its turn is pushed by the plunger, presents however an inconvenience which is due to the fact that the corners of the wrapper bottom cannot be practically squared out in a perfect manner, but have always a certain degree of roundness, so that, at high production rates of the cigarette packing machine, the cigarette group is pushed against the bottom of the wrapper at a high speed and the cigarettes located at the periphery of the bottom, particularly in the corner zones, are subjected to a brusque impact with the corresponding wrapper portions, and consequently are deformed and/or damaged.